Thought for the Week, July 20, 2025

This first article of the Credo is the foundation of the faith, the beginning of what Christians believe: that there is God, that this God is one, and that there is no other God beside him. Christianity’s belief in one God is seen by some as contradicted by belief in the Trinity.  But the belief that there are three persons in one God does not compromise the belief that there is one God, just as the existence of billions of human beings on this planet does not remove the fact that there is only one humanity, not billions.   

This first article of the Christian faith is a creedal response to the first commandment given to the children of Abraham through Moses on Mount Sinai: “I am the Lord, your God who brought you out of Egypt, where you lived as slaves. You shall have no other gods to rival me” (Ex 20:2-3//Dt 5:6-7).  Like the first commandment, the first article of the Creed rules out what believers are not to worship.   They are not to worship anything he has created. They are to worship him who has created all things.  They are neither to worship pleasure, nor riches, nor power, nor fame. They are not to worship any spirit. God alone is to be worshipped. True believers are not to worship miracles. They are to worship God who works miracles. He alone they are to worship because he made all and all belong to him.   

The creation narrative in Gen 1:1-31 has a refrain.  “God said, ‘Let there be….and there was….and God saw that it was good….Evening came and morning came.” 

There are three lessons to be learnt from that refrain.  The first is that God created everything, which is what is professed in the Credo when it is said that God is “maker of all things visible and invisible.” The second lesson is that everything God has created is good—“God saw that it was good.”  And the third is that these good things have their sunrise and their sunset—“Evening came and morning came.” 

Every creature is in some way a representation of the Creature.  But no creature is a perfect representation of the Creator.  The goodness that God is never fades because God has no beginning and no end.  But the goodness in what he has made fades because every creature has a beginning and an end.  The first article of faith does not deny that there is goodness in all that God has created.  It does not deny that, in so far as they are good, they are desirable.  Desiring the goodness in creatures is not a sin.  Desiring the goodness in them in a disordered way is.   Disordered love of material things is loving them apart from God instead of in God. To profess this faith and to practice it is to take a stand against materialism. Desire for the goodness that God is must be greater than desire for the goodness in the works of God. 

It is futile to seek rest in creatures.  The human heart can only find rest in God.  But the drama of human history is that human beings, rather than seek values, seek satisfaction, satisfaction in things that do not last, things that are today but will cease to be tomorrow.  In fact, they may be at this moment.  But by the next moment they may disappear.  Yet, there is so much greed for things that do not last, and people kill themselves and each other because of this greed.  They struggle to be in power so that they can acquire more riches and more pleasure.  Even some of those who profess the Creed every Sunday turn out to be diehard devotees of the god of materialism—the unholy trinity of power, possessions and pleasure. Some corrupt public officials are known as “devout” Christians, and some of them may be our fellow parishioners.   

The first article of the Credo is a reminder of the Shema Israel, the admonition given to every devout Jew: “Listen, Israel: the Lord our God is the one, the only Lord.  You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.  Let the words I enjoin on you today stay in your heart.  You shall tell them to your children, and keep on telling them, when you are sitting at home, when you are out and about, when you are lying down and when you are standing up; you must fasten them on your hand as a sign on your forehead as a headband; you must write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates” (Deut 6:4-9). 

Profession of the first article of the Creed in obedience to the first commandment and the Shema Israel, is not without an existential implication: whoever makes this profession of faith is making a vow to put God first, to give way to God in all things in life. 

The biography of every human being is a narrative of problems and prospects, and the diaries of men and women reflect their daily anxieties.  Each person is, at the same time, a bundle of hopes and fears, rolling through moments of joy and moments of sorrow, moments of pleasure and moments of pain, moments of triumph and moments of defeat.  Animated by more than one thousand and one preoccupations, human beings worry about so many things: about what to eat and about what not to eat, about what to wear and about what not to wear, about what others think of us and about what we think of others.  They worry about their jobs and about the economy, about families and relationships, about whom to vote for in elections and about who not to vote for.  

Nigerians woke up one morning and it was October 1, 1960.  Optimism was in the air.  A new nation was born, a big black nation.  So the world thought.  Her birth was taking place at a time erstwhile colonial powers were “granting independence” to their “colonies”.  A “wind of change” was blowing across the African continent.  But the promise soon fizzled out.  What was thought to be a nation was in fact, and still is, a state held together at gunpoint.  Why is it not yet a nation?  There is more than enough blame to share among all the regions, tribes and peoples around the Niger for the tensions and bloodshed of the past and of the present.   

The world woke up on September 11, 2001, another day that showed how bestial human beings can be, and, because of this propensity to bestiality, how vulnerable and insecure human beings are in the hands of one another when they harbor hatred and malice, and since then, insecurity has been a constant source of concern.  All that is not just because nations are at war with nations, not just because of suspicion and resentment among races and tribes.  All that goes on even within nations and within tribes, even among siblings. To be continued